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Monday, April 30, 2007

The outline of my koi is healing up nicely. The lines aren't raised anymore and most of the dead skin / scabs have come off in the shower or while I'm sleeping. I am starting to get used to seeing a giant fish on my shouler when I wake up in the morning or when I get out of the shower. The more I get used to it the more I love having it on my arm. I am really happy that I decided to go big on this tattoo, it looks so much more impressive and exciting than a smaller one would look. I still need to go back to schedule another appointment for the shading and coloring.

Tomorrow night Laura and I are going to attempt to make sushi unsupervised. Usually I call Heather and she comes over and directs the cooking, but we're bored and under a bit of a time cruch, so we decided to tackle it outselves. Hopefully it works out because I could potentially have sushi for lunch at school which would be delicious.

Speaking of school, I am done in less than two weeks. A week from Friday is my last day (I'm hoping to celebrate by getting more of my tattoo done) and I really couldn't be more excited. I turn in my last paper for my last class tomorrow and after that I have eight days of student teaching left before the summer. There is still that damn class I have to take over the summer but really I think I'm done in nine days.

Sunday, April 22, 2007

I had the past week off of student teaching and Laura and I spent most of it being rather sick. Aside from that, it was a pretty nice vacation.

The first Sunday I went to MetroRock to see where my climbing is right now. I climbed several V2's and 5.10b's without much trouble, which was exciting because I'm very quickly getting back to the level I was at before I tore my ACL.

A few days ago I took the derailers off of Laura's bike and turned it into a single speed. I was pretty surprised I could do it, since I've never dealt with any of those parts of a bicycle. She likes it and we took a really relaxing and fun ride yesterday. We were damn cute it I do say so myself.

Today I finally went and got my koi tattoo. The artist's name is Chris and he works at Good Faith Tattoos in Brookline. I was a bit put off when I got to the shop because he had drawn it really big, but after he scaled it down a bit and put it up to my shoulder it looked awesome. Once the fish itself was on my shoulder he started to freehand the finger waves right onto my chest and back. Seeing how calm (and skilled) he was while doing that really put me at ease. The outline took an hour to do and in a few weeks he'll start the shading and color.

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

A few days ago I recieved and e-mail telling me that I had passed my MTELs (the Massachusetts Tests for Educator Licensure). Today in the mail I recieved my official notices about my scores. Since I passed they didn't tell me my exact scores but they did break down each test (Math and Reading) into sections and give me information about each of those. The sections were scored by saying that I had given correct answers on "most or all items", "many of the items", "some of the items", or "few or no items". Four of the math sections (out of six) were "most or all", as were seven (out of ten) of the reading sections. The other five were "many", which I take to mean I did a damn good job.

This is interesting to me because today I realized that I'm skating on thin ice a lot of the time with my students. Especially with the Algebra II kids, but also sometimes with the Algebra I kids, I realize that I don't really know the math as well as I should. They will ask questions on the homework or while I'm lecturing that stump me and usually one of two things happen. I can either make up an answer that I realize is correct as I make it up, or I will realize that I really have no good answer and make something up that isn't incorrect, but doesn't really answer the question either. I think I've managed to do well so far but I find it odd that my test scores say I am quite qualified to teach math while my math skills seem to suggest otherwise.

Sunday, April 08, 2007

I think I am done with being a student teacher. At this point, I've been there for 6 weeks (I think) and I feel as though I've taken everything I can from the experience. The kids don't really respect me and while sometimes they sit and listen and learn, often they don't and it is very frustrating spending so much of my own time and energy planning lessons and teaching when I'm getting so little out of it. I really do think that I want to be a teacher, but I am finished with the whole student teaching thing. I mentioned this to Jessica on Thursday and I think she took it the wrong way (as in, I wasn't enjoying anything and that it was somehow a reflection of her), which made me feel pretty bad. I tried to explain what I meant but I don't know that she fully understood what I meant.

I had Friday off from teaching so I took the opportunity to go out to some bars on Thursday night. Alex and I wandered around Allston and Brookline drinking until around 2:30 in the morning. I haven't had that much to drink in several monthes; it felt really good to just let go completely and not worry about the next morning. Friday night I saw Grindhouse with Laura, Steve, Spoony, and Drew. I thought the whole experience was a lot of fun. I always enjoy Tarantino's movies, and I certainly enjoyed this one, but it is probably my least favorite. After watching Robert Rodriguez's movie about the zombies, Tarantino's movie just seemed to drag on for me.

Last night I watched UFC 69 at Alex's apartment. Some of the fights were entertaining, some were boring, and others were so unexpected that I'm still not sure if I enjoyed them or not. The highlight of the evening though, was playing Guitar Hero. I had never played before and it was a damn lot of fun.

A week from tomorrow is Marathon Monday which is the best day of the year, in my opinion. I also have that entire week off from school (their spring break) so the whole week is going to be marvelous.